EDITOR'S CHOICE -- SCOTT SUTTELL

The Wall Street Journal throws praise at this Cleveland glass house

If you love looking at fancy houses — and who doesn't? — by all means check out this Wall Street Journal gallery of urban glass houses, which includes a very cool home in Cleveland.

“A growing number of city dwellers are building glass houses — just a stone's throw from the street,” The Journal says. “Such homes allow in lots of light, but also curious looks from passersby; beware neighbors brandishing telescopes.”

In the heart of the historic Little Italy neighborhood in Cleveland, Stephen J. Bucchieri of Bucchieri Architects designed himself a townhouse in a neighborhood of streets lined with two- and three-story single-family residences on deep, narrow city lots. This is a new house built on a lot that used to have two houses.

Maintaining privacy was the architect's priority in the design, which he did by including an enclosed courtyard between a front and a back part of the house. The front and back have large windows. The architect also sought to offset what he calls the "visual noise of the surroundings" by making the exterior monolithic. The house is four stories, 3,800 square feet, and has three bedrooms and a roof terrace.

Drilling companies have become quite adept at using exemptions to keep the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, secret from the public, according to this story from Bloomberg.

We're all supposed to be really excited about fracking in Ohio, but nationwide, “companies withheld one out of every five chemicals they used in fracking,” Bloomberg reports, based on its review of chemical-disclosure records.

For instance, the news service notes that a subsidiary of Nabors Industries Ltd. in July pumped a mixture of chemicals identified only as “EXP- F0173-11” into a half-dozen oil wells in rural Karnes County, Texas. One ingredient in that blend, an unidentified solvent, “can cause damage to the kidney and liver, according to safety information about the product that Michigan state regulators have on file,” Bloomberg reports.

But a year-old Texas law that requires drillers to disclose chemicals they pump underground during fracking was powerless to compel transparency for EXP- F0173-11.

“The solvent and several other ingredients in the product are considered a trade secret by Superior Well Services, the Nabors subsidiary,” Bloomberg reports. “That means they're exempt from disclosure.”

Drilling companies in Texas, the biggest oil- and natural gas-producing state, claimed similar exemptions about 19,000 times this year through August.

Forbes.com and Payscale.com compiled compensation data for the 100 largest U.S. metro areas to generate lists of cities where college-educated professionals earn the largest, and smallest paychecks, and the results aren't great for Youngstown-Warren-Boardman.

At the top of the list is the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metro area. Overall median pay for professionals in the California metro is $93,100, though it's accompanied by a similarly high cost of living.

Meanwhile, Youngstown-Warren-Boardman ranks as the worst-paying city, as “college-educated employees there only make $45,400, on average,” Forbes.com says. “Newer professionals bring in about $36,800 a year; mid-career workers make $60,400, on average.”

Katie Bardaro, Payscale's lead economist, tells Forbes.com, “This is an industrial metro area that was hit hard in the last few recessions and has been unable to recover.”

The Columbia Journalism Review weighs in with a long look at what it calls the “resetting” of The Plan Dealer as the newspaper weighs a shift away from daily print publishing.

“For now, The PD's newsroom staff can only speculate about what lies ahead, but fear mixed with uncertainty and frustration are predominant sentiments,” writes T.C. Brown, who covered government and politics in the Ohio Statehouse Bureau for The PD for more than 17 years. “Many also believe that reducing print editions in favor of digital, which has led to layoffs elsewhere, will seriously impact overall news coverage. A component of the newspaper union's contract barring layoffs expires in January.”

Harlan Spector, president of The PD's Newspaper Guild Local One, tells Mr. Brown that the digital-platform model PD owner Advance Publications has been promoting is “all about volume and is click-driven.” The result: news as a constant stream of bits and pieces designed to attract viewers.

“What happens under that model is that the stories that get the most clicks are sex, crime and sports,” Mr. Spector says. “That's a real shift of emphasis where housing and education and other things fall. And then you cut staff and lose coverage and then what? You have to wonder how much serious journalism will get done.”

“Lofton is one of four modern-era players with 1,500 or more runs scored who's not in the Hall. … He ranks 15th all time with 622 steals, swiping those bags at an excellent success rate a shade under 80 percent,” Mr. Keri writes. “He hit .299/.372/.423 lifetime, and played fantastic defense at a premium position in center field.”

He concludes, “Lofton slots in nicely among the best center fielders of all time, just a shade below Duke Snider and above the likes of Richie Ashburn and Andre Dawson. He has no chance in hell of induction any time soon. But he's got my vote.”

Are you OK with a little more sports? (SportsBiz blogger Joel Hammond is on the way out, so he probably won't mind.)

This ranking of NBA rookies has the Cleveland Cavaliers' Dion Waiters at No. 5. Even so, SheridanHoops.com is a bit lukewarm on the young shooting guard from Syracuse.

“Already a streaky shooter with little conscience, (Waiters') attempts are way up and his percentage is down since Kyrie Irving went out five games ago,” according to the post. “But his scoring and assists are up as he has taken on more playmaking responsibility. Not quite sure if that's a good thing.”

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